Publications
"Safety assurance of Machine Learning for autonomous systems"
Paterson, C., Hawkins, R., Picardi, C., Jia, Y., Calinescu, R. and Habli, I.
Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 264, p.111311
"The BIG argument for AI safety cases"
Habli, I., Hawkins, R., Paterson, C., Ryan, P., Jia, Y., Sujan, M. and McDermid, J.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.11705
"Developing Compelling Safety Cases"
R. Hawkins
arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.00911 (2025)
"Safe Machine Learning: Why Performance Is Not Enough"
HAWKINS, R.D., Paterson, C., Habli, I. and Borg, M.
IEEE Software, 43(2), pp.11-15.
"Arguing the Safety of Agentic AI using LLM-as-Judge Evaluations"
CLEGG, K.D., HAWKINS, R.D., Lawton, T. and HABLI, I.
In SAFECOMP 2026
"RAFAEL: A Rational Fuzzy Approach for Explainable, Adaptive and Safe Decision-making under Uncertainty"
Bin Firoz, H., PATERSON, C. and HAWKINS, R.D.
In SAFECOMP 2026: 9th Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Safety Engineering (Waise)
"A Framework to Characterise Dynamic Safety Assurance"
Ryan, P.M., HAWKINS, R.D., McDermid, J.A. and HABLI, I.
In SAFECOMP 2026: 9th Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Safety Engineering (Waise)
"Evaluating Metrics for Safety with LLM-as-Judges"
Clegg, K., Hawkins, R., Habli, I. and Lawton, T.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.15617.
"A case study on defining traceable machine learning safety requirements for an automotive perception component"
Roudposhti, S.S., Hawkins, R.D., Burton, S., Hodge, V.J., Paterson, C. and Habli, I.
In 36th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering.
"Specifying Safety Requirements for Machine Learning Components in Autonomous Systems: A Survey."
Shahbeigi Roudposhti, S. and Hawkins, R.
In Safety Critical Systems Symposium (SSS '25)
"Practical Examples of a New Approach to Creating Clear Operational Safety Cases."
Fenn, J., Hawkins, R.D. and Nicholson, M.
In Safety Critical Systems Symposium (SSS '25)
"Implementing autonomy in nuclear robotics; an experience-informed review of applying SACE"
Mulvana, P., Marsland, L-J., Boden, T., Burroughes, G., Hawkins, R. D. & Osborne, M.
Safety-Critical Systems Symposium (SSS’24).
"A New Approach to Creating Clear Operational Safety Arguments"
Fenn, J., Hawkins, R. D. & Nicholson, M.
SAFECOMP 2024: 11th International Workshop on Next Generation of System Assurance Approaches for Critical Systems (SASSUR 2024).
"Learning Run-time Safety Monitors for Machine Learning Components"
Vardal, O., Hawkins, R. D., Paterson, C., Picardi, C., Omeiza, D., Kunze, L. & Habli, I.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.16220. (2024)
"Aloft: Self-Adaptive Drone Controller Testbed"
Imrie, C. C., Howard, R., Thuremella, D., Proma, N. M., Pandey, T., Lewinska, P. B. W., Cannizzaro, R., Hawkins, R. D., Paterson, C., Kunze, L. & Hodge, V. J.
SEAMS '24: Proceedings of the 19th Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems. ACM
"Defining an Effective Context for the Safe Operation of Autonomous Systems."
Osborne, M. and Hawkins, R.
European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC '24)
"The Safety of Autonomy: A Systematic Approach"
McDermid, J. A., Calinescu, R., Habli, I., Hawkins, R., Jia, Y., Molloy, J., Osborne, M., Paterson, C., Porter, Z. & Ryan Conmy, P.
Computer. 57, 4, 2004.
"Understanding Safety Engineering Practice: Comparing Safety Engineering Practice As Desired, As Required, and As Observed"
Osborne, M., Hawkins, R. D., Alexander, R. & Nicholson, M.
Safety science. 172, 22 2024
a href="papers/HawkinsSafecomp23_final.pdf">"Identifying Run-Time Monitoring Requirements for Autonomous Systems Through the Analysis of Safety Arguments"
Hawkins, R. and Ryan, P.
In Proceedings of Safecomp 2023.
"Creating a Safety Assurance Case for a Machine Learned Satellite-Based Wildfire Detection and Alert System"
Hawkins, R.D., Picardi, C., Donnell, L. and Ireland, M.
Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems (2023).
"Transfer Assurance for Machine Learning in Autonomous Systems"
Picardi, C., Hawkins, R.D., Paterson, C. and Habli, I.
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Artificial Intelligence Safety (SafeAI 2023).
"Guidance on the Safety Assurance of Autonomous Systems in Complex Environments (SACE)"
Hawkins, R., Osborne, M., Parsons, M., Nicholson, M., McDermid, J. and Habli, I.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.00853
"Analysing the Safety of Decision-Making in Autonomous Systems.
Osborne, M., Hawkins, R.D. and McDermid, J.A.
In SAFECOMP 2022 (41st International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security)
"Guidance on the Assurance of Machine Learning in Autonomous Systems (AMLAS)"
Hawkins, R. D., Paterson, C., Picardi, C., Jia, Y., Calinescu, R. and Habli, I.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.01564
"Robust Intent Classification using Bayesian LSTM for Clinical Conversational Agents (CAs)"
Aftab, H., Gautam, V., Hawkins, R. D., Alexander, R. & Habli, I.
EAI MobiHealth 2021
"Safety Cases: An Impending Crisis?"
Habli, I., Alexander, R. and Hawkins, R.
In Safety Critical Systems Symposium (SSS '21)
"Runtime Decision Making Under Uncertainty in Autonomous Vehicles"
Gautam, V., Gheraibia, Y., Alexander, R. and Hawkins, R.
In Workshop on Artificial Intelligence Safety (SafeAI 2021)
"An “As Desired” Model of the Software Safety Assurance Lifecycle"
Osborne, M., Hawkins, R.and Nicholson, M.
In Safety Critical Systems Symposium (SSS '21)
"Assuring the Safety of Machine Learning for Pedestrian Detection at Crossings"
Gauerhof, L., Hawkins, R.D., Picardi, C., Paterson, C., Hagiwara, Y. and Habli, I.
In SAFECOMP 2020 (39th International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security)
"Deep reinforcement learning for drone navigation using sensor data"
Hodge, V.J., Hawkins, R. & Alexander, R.
Neural Computing and Applications, pp.1-19.(2020)
"A Visual Notation for the Representation of Assurance Cases Using SACM"
Selviandro, N., Hawkins, R. and Habli, I.
In International Symposium on Model-Based Safety and Assessment (pp. 3-18). Springer, Cham.
"Model based system assurance using the structured assurance case metamodel."
Wei, R., Kelly, T.P., Dai, X., Zhao, S. and Hawkins, R.
Journal of Systems and Software, 154, pp.211-233, 2019
"From Safety Cases to Security Cases"
R. Alexander, R. Hawkins and T. Kelly
Safety-critical Systems Symposium 2017 (SSS'17)
"Weaving an Assurance Case from Design: A Model-Based Approach"
Richard Hawkins, Ibrahim Habli, Dimitris Kolovos, Richard Paige, Tim Kelly
16th IEEE International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering (HASE '15), Daytona Beach, FL, 2015
"The Need for a Weaving Model in Assurance Case Automation"
Richard Hawkins, Ibrahim Habli and Tim Kelly
Ada User Journal, Volume 36, No. 3 pp. 187 - 191, September 2015
"A Software Safety Argument Pattern Catalogue"
Richard Hawkins and Tim Kelly
Technical Report, Department of Computer Science, The University of York, YCS-2013-482
"Assurance cases and prescriptive software safety certification: A comparative study"
Richard Hawkins, Ibrahim Habli, Tim Kelly and John McDermid
Safety Science - 59 (2013) 55-71
"The Principles of Software Safety Assurance"
Richard Hawkins, Ibrahim Habli, and Tim Kelly
International System Safety Conference (ISSC) 2013, Boston
"Arguing Conformance"
Patrick Graydon, Ibrahim Habli, Richard Hawkins, Tim Kelly and John Knight
IEEE Software - Vol. 29, No.3 pp. 50 - 57, 2012
"Principled Construction of Software Safety Cases"
Richard Hawkins, Ibrahim Habli, and Tim Kelly
Next Generation of System Assurance Approaches for Safety-Critical Systems (SASSUR) - Safecomp 2013 Workshop
"Using a Software Safety Argument Pattern Catalogue: Two Case Studies"
Richard Hawkins, Kester Clegg, Rob Alexander, and Tim Kelly
Safecomp '11, Naples, 2011
"A New Approach to Creating Clear Safety Arguments"
Richard Hawkins, Tim Kelly, John Knight and Patrick Graydon
SSS '11, Southampton, 2011
"Security Assurance Cases: Motivation and the State of the Art"
R Alexander, R Hawkins, T Kelly
Report produced for CESG, April 2011
"Software safety: relating software assurance and software integrity"
Ibrahim Habli, Richard Hawkins, and Tim Kelly,
International Journal of Critical Computer-Based Systems 2010 - Vol. 1, No.4 pp. 364 - 383, 2010
"The Who, Where, How, Why and When of Modular and Incremental Certification"
J. Fenn, R. Hawkins, P. Williams, T. Kelly, M. Banner and Y Oakshott,
IET System Safety Conference, London, 2007
"Safety Case Composition Using Contracts - Refinements based on Feedback from an Industrial Case Study"
J. Fenn, R. Hawkins, P. Williams and T. Kelly,
SSS '07, Bristol, 2007
"Using Safety Contracts in the Development of Safety Critical Object-Oriented Systems"
R. D. Hawkins,
Ph.D. Thesis, The University of York, March 2006.
